Hitler's Spy Princess

by Martha Schad

  Budapest, 1938

  After the First World War the peacemakers and treaty-signers obliterated empires and acted as midwives at the birth of some awkward and unruly children. Nations had been truncated and carved apart like so many Christmas puddings to meet the idea of a new Europe. Millions smouldered under the pressure of unnatural boundaries, but none more so than the fiercely proud Hungarians.

  The patch on the map that marked Hungary was certainly the most curious jigsaw on the continent. Countless families suddenly found themselves as citizens of a foreign nation whose language they did not speak, whose customs they did not share. Divorced from their homeland and their birthright, those people had only one thought – to become Hungarians once again. They turned eagerly and impulsively to any promising corner, without thought of immediate consequence or eventual outcome.

  But in 1938 the political balance of Europe was so delicate that no nation could afford to hold out a helping hand. Of all countries, only Nazi Germany offered hope. Join our orbit, become our ally, the propagandists of Berlin said, and we will give you back your land, make you a nation once more.

  This siren song from the Rhine was not entirely a gesture of goodwill and friendly interest. Germany knew that France and Britain were firm allies, and that France, in turn, was committed to the support of the Little Entente – a group of three nations, Rumania, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia – that bitterly opposed any Hungarian expansion.

  At the time, sympathy in England was strongly for the Hungarian people, and yet England certainly could not risk offending the avowed policies of France, its strongest friend on the continent. This tangle was artfully exploited by the Nazis to drive a wedge between the western democracies. They strummed on the strings of Hungarian patriotism with a heavy-handed but effective Teutonic touch – by sending thousands of smiling ‘tourists’ into the country each summer, by planting agents and spies in many key positions, by creating ever-closer economic ties with Hungarian industry, and most important of all, by masquerading as the saviour of the Hungarian nation.

  This then was the situation when I visited Budapest in 1938 on a short trip. As always, I made it a point to pay my respects to the sprawling 100-year-old palace that brooded over the troubled city. At the time, Hungary was a kingdom without a king, governed by a Regent, His Highness Admiral Nicholas Horthy, a vigorous patriot who had given many years of selfless devotion to the cause of his country.

  I had planned to leave Budapest the day after calling on the Regent, and I was making preparations for my departure when a telephone call interrupted me. It was a Captain Scholz,1 who was Admiral Horthy’s personal adjutant. He was calling, he said, upon the instructions of the Regent, who requested me to come to the palace at once.

  It was impossible to refuse such a summons, and as I drove to keep my appointment, I speculated as to what he could want with me. I knew von Horthy could not tolerate Hitler. He realised that friendship with the Nazis meant death to his nation, but I also knew that popular pressure was slowly pushing him into an impossible situation, for he was but a single voice against national sentiment.2

  When I arrived, I was immediately ushered up the magnificent stairway, past gorgeously uniformed guards into the Regent’s office.

  He came forward and took my hand warmly, apologising for the urgent telephone call that had brought me to him. He wasted little time.

  ‘Princess Hohenlohe’, he said, ‘I want you to write me a letter.’

  ‘A letter?’ I echoed.

  ‘Yes. Several years ago Sir Austen Chamberlain,3 half-brother to the present prime minister of England, Mr Neville Chamberlain, paid me a visit. One day, before Sir Austen left, he told me how he had come to admire and deeply respect this country, this city, and our people. We discussed the melancholy situation of Hungary, and he assured me that we would eventually find friends in the west, and particularly in England. He told me that the time was not yet ripe for action, but that when the day came, I would only have to appeal to the conscience of his country, and aid would be sent.’

  Admiral Horthy held up his hand. ‘I know, I know, Sir Austen is dead. But I would like to remind his brother of his promise.’

  At this point, Captain Scholz entered the room to announce the arrival of a caller. I saw a look of anger pass over the Regent’s face.

  ‘Princess Hohenlohe’, he said, ‘our situation is becoming more intolerable every day. Only last week I was informed – unofficially, of course – that certain circles felt I was having too much social contact with Jews, that I must be careful to avoid the displeasure of the Germans.’ We smiled bitterly. ‘Yes, is that not difficult to believe? However, I immediately sent out an invitation to Mr and Mrs Manfred Weiss to attend a luncheon here at the palace. Do you know Manfred Weiss?’

  Of course I knew the man. He was a Jew, an extremely wealthy manufacturer, and probably Hungary’s leading industrialist. Such a gesture on Admiral Horthy’s part was typical of his spirit.

  ‘And now,’ he continued, ‘do you know who this latest caller is?’

  He did not wait for my answer. ‘He is the head of the Mercedes-Benz company. He has come to give me a personal gift from Hitler – an expensive automobile, which I do not want, do not need and will never use.’

  With a gesture of distaste, he paced across the carpet. ‘I will now have to return this compliment by sending the Führer an equally lavish gift. I shall send him a set of Heren china, and he will be pleased. However, I shall not be pleased, but I will not be under Hitler’s obligation.’

  He walked quickly to where I was seated.

  ‘Princess Hohenlohe’, he said earnestly, ‘I want you to write me a letter, and I want you to take that letter to the British prime minister. I do not want to send it through official channels because the Germans have too many spies in too many places and I do not want my message to be relayed to the Reichstag. I am asking you this because your English is more fluent than mine. I want you to ask Mr Chamberlain for help. Help in the name of the Hungarian people, in the name of humanity, in the name of the solemn promise given to me by his dead brother. I expect no miracles, Princess Hohenlohe, but I must reach out to someone.’

  Naturally I accepted the assignment. I returned to my hotel and wrote the following letter:

  Dear Mr Chamberlain,

  It is not in my official capacity as the Regent of Hungary that I am writing this letter to you, but as Admiral Horthy, a Hungarian who loves this country above all.

  Three years ago I had the pleasure to see your brother Sir Austen Chamberlain here as my guest.4 He showed great interest in all the questions concerning my country. He asked me to explain to him the case of my country – the wrongs and injustices done to her. Sir Austen understood that Hungary’s claims are just and fair and told me when I asked him to give me his help and advice: ‘keep quiet now. I promise you when the right moment comes, I will help you.’ The past three years are proof that I carried out Sir Austen’s advice loyally. I waited for ‘the right moment’ to come and therefore I am appealing to you – the man who has shown so much wisdom and courage lately – asking you to accept your brother’s promise to help us, as a legacy to you and to all in your own and in your great country’s power, to assist us now in this eventful hour. German insistence is mounting. I am under constant pressure from without and within. I will be unable to justify my insistence much longer without your help.

  I pledge my word that you will never have to regret it and assure you of the undying gratitude of the entire Hungarian nation.

  Sincerely yours,

  Nicholas v. Horthy.

  Later that afternoon I travelled once more to the palace. Once more I was announced immediately and ushered in to the Regent. He read over my letter carefully and gratefully took my hand in his.

  ‘Thank you, Princess Hohenlohe’, he said sincerely, ‘This is exactly what I wanted.’

  He sat down behind his enormous desk and laboriously copied the unfamiliar English in his o
wn hand, sealed it himself and gave it to me.

  As he took me to the door of his office, he put his hand on my arm. ‘Tell Chamberlain that the Germans are too near. They must listen, for if one country goes under, all are threatened.’

  That was the last time I saw Admiral Horthy.

  I drove to the airport, took my plane, and the same day was back in London. A good friend, Sir Thomas Moore MP, agreed to deliver my note to the prime minister. A few hours later it was in his hands.

  The rest, of course, is history. Admiral Horthy was right. The Germans were too near and absorbed his country. Within a year Britain was fighting for her life. Within two years the entire free world was engaged in that struggle.

  And then again, twenty years later, I saw the messages that came from Budapest.

  GOD SAVE OUR SOULS.

  THE RUSSIANS ARE TOO NEAR.

  Once again the world listened helplessly, unable to act because of the tangle of international conditions. It may be a fateful and prophetic message, because, except for a single word, it was the same message a very brave man had tried once before to deliver.

  Notes

  1: The Girl from Vienna

  1 All quotations in this chapter, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Hoover Institution Archives, Stanford, Outline for the Memoirs of Princess Hohenlohe Waldenburg, Box 5.

  2 Hoover Institution Archives, Hohenlohe Box 3 – Prefatory Morning Monologue.

  3 Gina Kaus was born in 1893 in Vienna, the daughter of Max and Ida Wiener. Not until her father died did she discover that she had a half-sister, Stephanie. Gina married and became a successful novelist in the 1930s, but then her books were publicly burned, along with those of many leading Jewish and anti-Nazi writers, and she emigrated to California in 1938. In postwar Germany, two of her later novels, The Devil Next Door and The Devil in Silk, became bestsellers; in 1956 the latter was made into a film starring Curt Jürgens and Lilli Palmer.

  4 See Stoiber/Celovsky, Stephanie von Hohenlohe, p. 51.

  5 See Charles-Roux, Coco Chanel.

  2: A Mission for Lord Rothermere

  1 An alliance between France and Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia and Rumania, which was designed to contain a resurgent Hungary.

  2 From 1928 Bella Fromm, who came from a prosperous Jewish family, wrote for the Berliner Zeitung and other liberal newspapers. She had access to influential political circles in Berlin and knew everyone who mattered. Until the Nazi marginalisation of Jews began, she was extremely popular. Even when excluded from her profession, she refused for a long time to leave Germany. On advice from friends she finally emigrated to the USA, where she continued to work as a journalist. Some of her diaries were published in English in 1943.

  3 Otto Abetz (1903–1958) was a schoolmaster who in 1930 co-founded the Sohlberg Club for the furtherance of understanding between the youth of Germany and France. He made frequent visits to France but in July 1939 he was expelled in connection with the trial of a secret fascist organisation known as the Cagoulards. After working in the German Foreign Ministry he was appointed in August 1940 as ambassador to the collaborationist French government in Vichy.

  4 Brook-Shepherd, G. Zita, the Last Empress, London, HarperCollins, 1991, p. 229. Brook-Shepherd writes about two women being sent to see the empress: one was Steffi Richter ‘who was well known in high society … as the amie attirée of Lord Rothermere’. The other was a member of the Austrian nobility, Princess Stephanie. But these were, of course, one and the same person.

  5 Brook-Shepherd, op. cit.

  6 Brook-Shepherd, op. cit. From an interview given to the author by Otto von Habsburg in 1990.

  3: Hitler’s ‘Dear Princess’

  1 Fromm, When Hitler Kissed my Hand.

  2 Fromm, op. cit.

  3 Picker, Hitler’s Table Talk.

  4 Jochmann (Ed.), Monologues at the Führer’s Headquarters 1941–44.

  5 Sharply censured by the League of Nations, Italy was becoming dangerously isolated. Hitler exploited this by establishing closer ties with Mussolini. Germany shipped coal and steel to Italian industry. However, at the same time Hitler secretly prolonged the war by supplying war materials to Abyssinia, in order to increase further Mussolini’s dependence on him.

  6 Two weeks previously, on 25 December, Hitler had changed his personal doctor and put himself in the hands of Dr Theodor Morell. The latter treated his stomach pains with a medication containing strychnine.

  7 Dodd, Martha, My Years in Germany, London, Gollancz, 1939.

  8 Dodd, op. cit.

  9 In December 1941 FBI agents found and photographed this badge with its swastika, as they searched her house in Alexandria, Virginia. It was in a jewel-case in her bedroom.

  10 Dirksen later succeeded Ribbentrop as Germany’s ambassador in London, a post he held until the outbreak of war.

  4: Stephanie’s Adversary: Joachim von Ribbentrop

  1 Schwarz, This Man Ribbentrop.

  2 Kershaw, Hitler Vol II, 1936–1945: Nemesis, 2000.

  3 Kershaw, op. cit.

  4 Speer, A., Inside the Third Reich, p. 108.

  5: Lady Astor and the Cliveden Set

  1 2nd Viscount Elibank (1877–1951) was a career civil servant in the Colonial Office, with many senior overseas postings. On retirement he became chairman of several large companies.

  2 19th Baron Sempill (1893–1965). A pioneer aviator, he joined the Royal Flying Corps (1914–19) and later headed a mission to organise the Imperial Japanese naval air service. In 1925 and 1928 he lectured to the German Aeronautical Society in Berlin. He competed in the King’s Cup round-Britain air race every year from 1924 to 1930, and was president of the Royal Aeronautical Society (1926–30).

  3 At the beginning of the war, one of Astor’s sons, David (d. 2001) took over as editor of the Observer, and always took a strongly anti-Nazi position, aided by German emigrés such as Sebastian Haffner.

  4 The Astors originally came from Spain, from the town of Astorga in Galicia. In the eighteenth century they moved to Germany, adopted the name Astor and went into business as butchers. The three sons born in Germany emigrated to the USA and Britain where they made huge fortunes.

  5 In the early 1960s Cliveden again hit the headlines, when the house was the scene of events that became known as ‘The Profumo Affair’. At Cliveden house-parties, John Profumo, a senior member of the Conservative government, met and began a relationship with Christine Keeler, whose ‘services’ were concurrently being enjoyed by the military attaché at the Soviet Embassy. Cliveden is now a luxury hotel.

  6 Margaret (‘Margot’) Tennant (1862–1945) married H.H. Asquith in 1894. She had no public career, but was highly influential behind the scenes. She published an autobiography in 1922.

  7 Herbert Henry Asquith (1852–1928) was Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Liberal government (1905–8) and prime minister of a Liberal-Conservative coalition (1908–16). On his retirement in 1926 he was created 1st Earl of Oxford and Asquith.

  6: Stephanie, Wiedemann and the Windsors

  1 Wallis Warfield was born in Pennsylvania in 1896. In 1916 she married a naval officer, Earl W. Spencer. She divorced him in 1927, and the following year married Ernest A. Simpson, an American who worked in London and had taken British nationality. In October 1936 she divorced Simpson, in order to be free to marry King Edward VIII, with whom she had already had a relationship for several years.

  2 See Kershaw, Ian, Hitler Vol II, p. 24.

  3 Goebbels, J. Diaries, 7 January 1937.

  4 Stanley Baldwin, statement to the House of Commons on the Abdication of Edward VIII, 10 December 1936.

  5 Unity Mitford (d. 1948) was one of the daughters of Lord Redesdale and sister of Diana (d. 2003), wife of Sir Oswald Mosley, leader of the British Union of Fascists. Unity spent much of her time in Germany and was on close terms with Hitler. When war between Britain and Germany broke out, she tried to shoot herself in Munich, and eventually died of her injuries.

  7: T
rips to the USA and their Political Background

  1 The Polish Corridor was the term given to the strip of territory linking the Polish interior with the Baltic coast at Danzig (today Gdansk). The corridor, comprising most of what was West Prussia, was ceded to Poland in 1919 and separated the German province of East Prussia from the rest of the Reich.

  2 In 1936 Thomsen had been appointed First Secretary at the Washington embassy, and then in November 1938, Chargé d’Affaires. From 1943 to 1945 he was Nazi Germany’s ambassador to Sweden.

  8: Rivals for Hitler’s Favour: Stephanie and Unity

  1 The eldest sister, Nancy, became a famous author, whose books, such as The Pursuit of Love, The Sun King, and Madame de Pompadour are still read. Her sister Jessica ran off at the age of eighteen with Esmond Romilly, a nephew of Winston Churchill. Romilly, who was then flirting with communism, fought in the Spanish Civil War and died in action in 1941. Jessica then made a career as a writer in the USA. The beautiful Diana first married and divorced Brian Guinness, the brewery heir, then had a long affair with Sir Oswald Mosley, the leader of the British Union of Fascists. On the death of Mosley’s wife, he and Diana married. At the outbreak of war they were both imprisoned for treason, and after the war settled in France. Lady Mosley died in 2003. Pamela Mitford married an academic and spent most of her life in a castle in Ireland. The youngest sister, Deborah, married the Duke of Devonshire, with whom she runs one of Britain’s great stately homes, Chatsworth, in Derbyshire.

  2 Pryce-Jones, Alan, Unity Mitford.

  9: Wiedemann’s Peace Mission

  1 In December 1934 Hitler had secretly appointed Göring as his successor. He was promoted to Generalfeldmarschall in February 1938, and in July 1940 was given the title Reichsmarschall of the Greater German Reich.